


Hydrangeas

by spyrkle10



Category: El Goonish Shive
Genre: Canon Relationships, Character Death, F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-18 09:58:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12385872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spyrkle10/pseuds/spyrkle10
Summary: A story that takes place sometime after Sisters 3. Pandora tries to reset while passing on her memories, and it's a gradual process.





	Hydrangeas

There’s gray clouds in the sky. It’s going to rain soon. The air is thick and doesn’t want to leave her lungs, so she stops breathing as she sits down.  
The bench is polished and smooth, not at all like real wood. Fake. She wants to tear it up and show everyone how fake it is. Unfair, it’s unfair. Absolutely so. But if she does that, it would be bad. People wouldn’t understand it. People shouldn’t understand such things.  
  
After all, if everyone knew about magic… she wants them to. But it’s a secret, and secrets should be kept. She weaves a hydrangea in full bloom into her cupped palms. It’s blue, like her eyes but so much brighter. It’s the prettiest thing she’s ever seen, so she wants to see it until the end.  
  
“Are you lost?” Someone asks. She looks at him. Bland. Boring. She wants to watch everything turn red and listen to his heart breaking and use him until he dies – no, she can’t do that. That’s boring too. The world is made of dust.  
  
Wait, she has to say something, right? It’s only been a few seconds, though. Humans do things so quickly. It’s why she hates them so much.  
  
“I’m not lost. Are you? Your wife is never home, is she? And your kids aren’t either… I wonder. Do you have a place to go when nobody wants you?” There. Perfect. He’ll go away now.  
  
He stares at her for a minute and slowly walks away. The expression on his face was one of shock and horrified understanding. Pitiful. Just a few words and they all come apart. What would happen if she said such things to Tedd? Him, too.  
  
She would never do something like that, but he’s just like the rest. They all are. So ugly. Most immortals are the same. So pathetic and stale and the world is confining her and she can’t exist anymore. Not as she is.  
  
But she doesn’t want to die. She just wants to find something new. Something, anything, to make her mind stop being like this – there’s the soft sound of something being crushed. The hydrangea. And it’s raining now. It’s all broken up and drenched in the rain.  
  
Humans hide from the rain. They hide from the world. Under umbrellas and in stores and in homes, they flee from reality and chase after the illusion of safety and happiness. She wonders why she was ever the same as them. The few humans that are drenched in the rain shiver and curse. Endless terror and anger over the way of the world.  
  
Today is the day she marked for it. The day she needs to disappear and stop being the ‘Pandora’ she is right now. If she was being serious, she’d cry. She’d break. So she has to be angry and childish. Just like the humans in the rain.  
  
She wanted to see someone one last time. ____, whose face and name she’s already given away. She’d wanted to hold onto it so much. She would die to protect that image, of the person who she loved until he was torn away and even then she loved him still.  
  
But she can’t now. Her next self has to keep that safe for her. That person will exist solely to protect her family. That person has to be whole and complete and they must never stray from their assigned role. They’re not a person at all, are they? A tool. Yes, they’re her tool. The most important one ever.  
  
Humans bleed out. Immortals don’t need to. She’s slipping away. Not her name, not her ideals. But all the extraneous stuff. The memories that are most important. Humans throw them out all the time. Immortals do it too.  
  
“How much longer?” Adrian. He came. Is he crying, or is it the rain? No. He wouldn’t cry. Rain, rain, why are you here?  
  
“Hmm…” She hums a song she can’t remember the name of. “A little bit left, a lot left. Of who, though?” She releases the power she still carries within her, and it fades away from her perception. “Can you tell? Is it the Pandora to be, or the Pandora of the present, who’s talking to you? You should go now, son.” And she laughs and she laughs. He sighs and walks away.  
  
If she’d tried a little harder to act sane, he might have stayed. But then she might have hurt him. Or worse. She might have confused him with ____. And then, she would, she would – awful. She doesn’t want to think about it.  
  
He’d hate her, after that. And she’d have tainted ___’s memory. No. So she should be alone. Hydrangeas don’t have much of a smell. They’re prized only for their beauty. But it feels as if, if she just breathed, she would be able to smell the crushed flower in her hands. She crumbles it a little more with her tanned fingers.  
  
Maybe her next self should have pale skin and pale hair and pale eyes. That self would be cleansed of anything wrong, anything twisted. There was still a little time left. A little time for ‘Pandora’ to say goodbye if she wanted to. But why would she? She wasn’t leaving. She wasn’t dying. She was being erased. Why should she leave anything behind?  
  
“Are you cold?” Another person. So many people today. Ants. She wishes that she could crush them and shakes her head. And she is alone again. Humans are such ignorant things.  
  
There it is. She should have remembered. All her past selves passed it on. The feeling of the world’s rejection. Being rejected and told to stop living. Stop existing. It hurts. It’s like when he died or when Adrian told her he would have hated her and no, it’s not that, it’s all of it and more and more and it’s getting worse.  
  
She wants to scream. She wants to rip everything up but she already gave up her strength. She wants to pluck out her eyes and fling them away so they’ll go on seeing the world forever. No. No. This is all for them –  
  
She opens her hands and the hydrangea is dust falling to the ground and –  
  
Pandora. That was the person I was before, right? She gave me everything I need. These precious names, these precious people that need someone to protect them and give them strength. I take a deep breath. The air is so clear, and it’s my first breath. Maybe she thought I should look different, but I’m just carrying her dreams forward to the future.  
  
I’ll figure out my name later. I have an important job to do. It’s still raining, though. Even as I stand up and stretch, it’s still raining. I should find Adrian and introduce myself. And I should go to **his** grave – Blaike. The world is such an interesting place, and I’ll do my part to continue making it even better, for all the people I love –  
  
The child becomes an adult. Or, perhaps the adult becomes a child. Within the mud rests the bright blue of a broken hydrangea.

**Author's Note:**

> My apologies if my punctuation or formatting made it difficult to read. I tried to emulate the writing style of Japanese light novels a little, since the symbolism of the hydrangea in this story is mostly taken from Japanese culture.


End file.
